Nick Griffin has sent out this missive to supporters following BBC Question Time last night.

Fellow British Patriot

“The man’s got guts!” “At last, someone saying exactly what we all feel”. “The hand-picked audience in the studio hated what Nick had to say, but we loved it”. “I’ve never seen such political bullying on TV in my life.” “When he pointed out how all the others are racist against the English, we were all cheering”.

Just a few of the responses to the long-awaited BBC Question Time with Nick Griffin tonight. It was never going to be easy: Central London is the most ‘enriched’ and ‘diverse’ part of Britain, the BBC audience selection process is clearly guaranteed to ‘weed out’ politically incorrect guests, and the other panellists shared one aim: to rough up Nick Griffin.

As it is, no-one who saw Jack Straw turn ashen-faced when Nick responded to his ‘Nazi’ smear by pointing out that “my father served in the RAF during the Second World War – yours spent it in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler.” Time and time again Nick gave as good as he got.

Most of all though, this wasn’t a proper Question Time at all. The usual format was done away with for the first time in 30 years as the BBC over-compensated for allowing us on by setting things up for a televised lynching.

There was nothing about current affairs at all; no postal strike, nothing about the announcement that Tony Blair is about to be appointed EU President, nothing about the continued slaughter of young British soldiers in Afghanistan, nothing about the latest stages of the banking crisis and the scandal of the Government propping up corrupt banks while imposing savage cuts on essential services. On all those subjects and many more, the BNP’s nationalist position offers a real alternative to the three old internationalist parties.

But the only non-BNP/immigration question was about a Daily Mail article on the death of Stephen Gately, and even that was a trap – which Chairman Nick Griffin avoided with both ease and principle.

Where does it leave the BNP? On this day alone our website has had in the region of 15 million ‘hits’ and over 2,000 new registrations for future membership before QT even started! Millions were shocked by the violence of the leftist mob sponsored by – among other MPs – Peter Hain and David Cameron.

With millions more people beginning to grasp the extent to which the three old parties are essentially the same, while the British National Party is really different. With millions of people knowing that in just a couple of killer soundbites in the middle of the programme, Nick Griffin summed up exactly how they, and all their friends and neighbours, feel about the mess that Lib-Lab-Con have made of our poor country.

They will also have noted very well that Nick Griffin and Bonny Greer clearly got on well, and that Nick listened with respect and answered with consideration even hostile questions from members of ethnic minorities in the audience; the hostility tonight wasn’t from Nick towards anyone on account of their ethnicity or religion, it was from the representatives of the failed old parties towards the new kid on the block.

When the details of all the personal attacks against Nick Griffin are long forgotten, people will remember him standing up bravely to a barrage of hate to say things on behalf of the Silent Majority that have never been said on the flagship programme of British politics before. “Nick Griffin – he speaks for us”.

Reader comments

“They will also have noted very well that Nick Griffin and Bonny Greer clearly got on well”

Why does that leave me thinking of some awkward teenager who’s just made a cack-handed attempt to chat up the most glamorous girl in the classroom, and then walked away bragging to his mates, “Yeah, yeah, she totally fancied me” while ignoring the look of utter disdain on her face.

Well, we could have hardly expected him to say “What Bonnie said about the Ice Age really got me thinking, lads… We should rejig a lot of our policies around… we can drop all this ‘ethnic British’ tosh for a start.”

I find it sad that he thinks that Jack Straw’s face went ashen because comparing what dads did in the war is political debate.

I also noticed that he was trying to listen to “even ethnic minorities” with “consideration” but I wonder if anyone will tell him that the effort to treat the audience members as individual human beings made his face sneer?

I thought Straw and Warsi had a good debate about immigration, but overall none of them really tackled a big issue, which is that people buy the myth that English people have been made into second-class citizens.
The BNP thrive on the idea of a conspiracy, that X, Y and Z are conspiring against X, Y, and Z (the indigenous British in this case).
It’s a shame that immigration is not tackled and then it takes the BNP getting 1 million votes before it enters mainstream debate, and then most of the show is about it.
Griffin showed himself as a far-right nasty-man who relies on the idea of this conspiracy, but the issues which force people into his grubby paws were not properly addressed. Straw tried, and I thought did pretty well all night, but didn’t make the case forcefully enough. People need to know that it’s ok to feel proud to be British without being labelled racist, which is something the Tories have traditionally done far better than Labour. Due, I think, to our more bleeding heart liberal wing (including me to some extent).
Griffin’s a right winger, so I don’t like him. But if enough people shun pride in their origins (e.g. being British), there is a vacuum created into which the likes of Griffin step.

“We were seated next to each other and as we were having our microphones attached, he leaned towards me like I was his new best friend and tried to make small talk. “Bonnie, how many times have you been on?” he asked. “Bonnie, do you find it scary?” I looked him straight in the eye. “No,” I replied sharply, “but you might.”

Speaking exclusively to the Evening Standard immediately after filming at Television Centre in west London, Greer, 60, describes – over a stiff vodka – the ordeal of sitting next to Griffin as “probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life”.

“I spent the entire night with my back turned to him. At one point, I had to restrain myself from slapping him. But it was worth it,” she insists, “because he was totally trounced. I had thought we’d face a formidable orator, somebody who knew his facts and had his ducks in a row but the guy was a mess!
…
She shrugs. “Afterwards, there is usually a communal supper for all the panellists. But not this time. Nobody could bring themselves to break bread with Nick Griffin.”

‘Why does that leave me thinking of some awkward teenager who’s just made a cack-handed attempt to chat up the most glamorous girl in the classroom, and then walked away bragging to his mates, “Yeah, yeah, she totally fancied me” while ignoring the look of utter disdain on her face.’

The word ‘stalker’ springs to mind.

He’s probably got a shrine to her in his bedroom with a lock of her hair and some stolen underwear. Probably dances around his house wearing them, blacked, up with his balls tucked between his legs.

The whole format of QT was changed. Did they really have to resort to that to discredit Griffin? l can’t stand the man but to change the format into a bear trap was totally unnecessary and somewhat counter-productive. Dimbers statrted off with usual ‘the panelists don’t know the questions they’ll be asked’ … first question and Jack Straw goes to the top of his notes to reply! Also Greer’s comments about people not being able to live in UK re last ice age? Total crap! see http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba70/feat1.shtml

You don’t have to stack the deck or resort to porkies to show what Griffin and the BNP are. To do so reaks of uncertainty and fear.

Not sure why you feel the need to knock Greer’s excellent writing ability, combine that with a comment about how the BNP have had an alleged increase in new applications and you come out of that comment looking a bit odd.

I think that Question Time should have followed the normal format. I would have been interested to see how Nick Griffin handled questions on topical news items and how deep his knowledge was. I also feel that changing the format into a Pantomime in which he was cast as the villain was wrong morally and tactically (as many are perhaps coming to realise). Once the decision had been made to have him on the show the BBC should have played it straight.

They couldn’t play it straight
Anymore than I could play straight to being in Lewisham this afternoon.

The Lewisham shopping center on a saturday afternoon is a sight to see.
No middle class people go there. It’s a ghetto shopping center.

I went into a cafe where arab guys were standing ouside smoking on Lee High Road this afternoon, and as I walked down to the back of their cafe, to just take a look, I was asked what I was doing.
”Just looking” I said, but they still thought my behavoir was suspicious.
I talked with one of the guys for a few minutes and said I was like a tourist who knew Lee High Road from years ago, but I hadn’t seen their cafe before.
I was invited to come in and drink coffee, but declined as I didn’t want to make a big deal of my just looking about.
It felt that they were treating me as an anomaly. A bit of a freak.
I’d just had my lunch directly across the road in a Chinese noodle place.

Where just a few doors along is a Baltic/Polish supermarket that has a Bureau de change shop frontage and seems to be a space for people from the Baltic countriies.

Lewisham is a place that Nick Griffin would love to make a documentary about.
I guess that he has to be prevented from doing so. And be called a Nazi (etc) if he did.

Because saying things like ”do you want your local high street to become like Lewisham or Lee High Road?” … might get a lot of people saying ‘no’

The audience and Bonnie Greer were the best parts of this Question Time. She showed intelligence and was a clear example of why the BNP are so intrinsically wrong, Griffin was a mess. I am sure if he became elected to the House of Commons, which could happen, he would be eaten alive by the real politicians in the house. He seemed incapable of honestly stating his party’s policies or is his party in shock since it now has to stop being a whites only and gay hating party? As the skin of the snake fell off the serpent that was the National Front and became the serpent of the BNP is the BNP being forced into a new metamorphosis? Or is it the end for the BNP? Who knows. Will there be a schism?

I went into a cafe where arab guys were standing ouside smoking on Lee High Road this afternoon, and as I walked down to the back of their cafe, to just take a look, I was asked what I was doing.
”Just looking” I said, but they still thought my behavoir was suspicious.

Well, yeah. If someone came into a greasy spoon and started rattling the drawers with no intention of buying anything, I’d be a mite concerned. Maybe they’re from the Department of Health or something.

“I was invited to come in and drink coffee, but declined as I didn’t want to make a big deal of my just looking about.”

The absolute swine!! Send them back now!

“It felt that they were treating me as an anomaly. A bit of a freak.
I’d just had my lunch directly across the road in a Chinese noodle place.”

I think it’s probably more for the novelty value than any sense of being treated like a Victorian sideshow. Personally, I love Arab cuisine; a bit of pigeon pie covered in sugar.

Would a McDonalds make you feel better? Irish brothers in America selling German food? Ironically generally staffed by non native English speakers because no bugger will work for the wage they offer. Is that the RIGHT kind of food?

Or should we just go back to people hawking their turnips in wooden trays?